After a time a negro passed near the cotton-shed — one of the kind called "roustabouts" in that part of the country - people who live in a happy-go-lucky sort of way, dependent from day to day on stray jobs or stray thefts, never losing flesh or vivacity, never appearing otherwise than supremely content with life and their lot.

Each of the steamers has its special stall, into which it swings with grace and precision, to the music of a tolling bell and an occasional hoarse scream from the whistle; and the instant the cables are made fast and the gangways swung down, the "roustabouts" are on board, and busily wheeling the variously branded bales to the spaces allotted them on the wharves.

There were many opportunities for low-level rig workers, known as "roustabouts" and "roughnecks," to work at other drill contracting companies and for senior management to find positions at oil companies.

Trained in Los Angeles at the Art Center College of Design (MFA, '90) and the UCLA Writer's Studio, Daniel went on to Seattle to co-found Big Fig Design Group, a multi-disciplinary group of artists, designers and roustabouts who like to make things.

As someone who works in wildlife conservation and lives in the heart of North Dakota's oil boom, I don't like to see birds die from wind turbines or because roustabouts on the rig don't feel like throwing a net over the pit.